Piece By Piece
by capitolrebel
Summary: For the Time After Time challenge. If the ones that leave are in any position to tell us, the least we can do is seek them out to ask the question.


_This is my (extremely) long overdue answer to N&M and WRW's Time After Time challenge. And I sort of cheated, and I edited it too much, but here it is. Finally._

She never writes. Considering who she is, that's noteworthy by itself, but he guesses she just doesn't know what to say. He doesn't mind, anyway. In November, just after Peynton, a tiny gold cross. He thinks it might be from that necklace she always wore and wishes he could remember better.

The pods whirr-hiss closed behind Jo and he breathes a sigh of relief. He's been trying to get rid of them all for hours now; at around midnight he'd set himself the slightly more realistic target of leaving Adam and Ros nursing glasses of whiskey in his office and ushering everyone else off the main Grid.

He wonders sometimes if she's trying to tell him something. If she's calling out to him, and he can't hear what she's said, or won't listen. In February, he gets a tiny red-wrapped chocolate heart. By March, she's regained her composure and sends only a particularly striking piece of jasper. If she has a code, he can't see it.

Ros looks up as he enters the office. She's cradling her drink into her body like a baby, nestled in her arms. Adam is sat hunched over, staring at the rings of condensation his own glass has left on the table. Harry sits opposite them, studying both, and tells himself he's looking for operational fitness, not help. Not some clue as to how they deal with this aching, breaking sense of loss.

He doesn't need help. He doesn't.

"Want some?"

He acquiesces, and Ros finds another glass from somewhere, fills it, and leans over to top up Adam's without bothering to ask.

"Which do you think is harder?" the younger man speaks, and Ros looks as surprised as Harry feels. "Being the one that leaves, or the one that gets left behind?"

Harry contemplates his answer for a moment, feeling the need for honesty but not wanting to give too much away. There was a time when he trusted Adam completely; in recent months, it's given way to something else. Pity, perhaps, and doubt.

"I don't know" he eventually murmurs "The ones who leave are never really in a position to tell us."

When Ros speaks next, he almost wonders if she might know. Impossible, of course, but her words are startlingly faithful to his truth.

"I think it might be easier to be left behind" her eyes shift from him to Adam "if I had something to remember by."

When Adam knocks back the whiskey and stands, Harry breathes a sigh of relief. Her words were calculated, but not for him.

"I need to go home. I need to see Wes."

They nod their goodbyes. Another whirr-hiss, another lost soul released into the ether, one step closer to the solitude he so desperately needs and so painfully does not want. His eyes lock onto the ribbon and Harry suspects that Ros will outlast even him tonight, and that there won't be a drop of alcohol left on the Grid by morning.

It's been there since Malcolm's funeral. Thin, black, tied at the front of her wrist with a neat bow. Jo spent the whole day hovering around her, waiting for the outburst they all expected, and nothing came. No tears, no anger. She didn't eat the food at the wake and she didn't want to meet his family or his college friends.

The next day, there was the ribbon. She hasn't taken it off since. Everyone grieves in their own way, he supposes. A fitting mark of respect, as private as their relationship when he was alive.

"Your clock is broken."

Three days after she left, it stopped. Not a great believer in providence, he gave it a new battery and forgot about it. Ever since, its workings have been sporadic at best. He's been late for several important meetings. He doesn't know why he doesn't just replace the damn thing.

"Yes. It does that. The second hand unwound some time ago, I'm afraid. Why, what time is it?"

She's not wearing a watch. She's wearing that ribbon instead.

"Does it matter?"

"No" he smiles to himself. "No, I suppose it really doesn't."

They're silent awhile. Harry doesn't mind. It's in her nature to break it, not his.

"Did you take anything?"

"What?"

"What I said…I wasn't just trying to get rid of Adam. I'd like something to remember him by. And I just wondered if you'd think it was morbid if I…"

He shakes his head. "Not at all. You can go to his house; I'm sure he'd want you to have something."

She uncurls her fingers from around the glass and flexes them before she sets it down on the table next to Adam's.

"I didn't love him" she says softly. She has needed to tell someone this for weeks. "I didn't. But I think I could have. If we…if we had time."

"Go to his house, Ros. Take whatever you want. I mean it."

She looks up at him "When Ruth died…"

"I went to her house. I packed a suitcase full of memories, and I brought it home with me. Some of it was neccessity – she left me the blasted cats, for one, and I didn't have food or any of that. But most of it…I took the strangest things. Some of her books. A few of her clothes, things I remembered her wearing. I took her dictionary because I picked it up and it fell open at love."

Ruth is fond of coins; the first one had come in April, a hybrid coin, sides from two different issues. It took him a week to work this out, and another to catch her meaning. She always had a gentle sense of humour. He consoles himself with the fact that she didn't send him drugs or shoes.

"What else?"

He realises Ros is looking for a tutorial, and he can't give her one. There's no right way to handle this, losing someone you love or could have loved. But Ros is just as alone as he is (was) and he needs to give her all the answers he can.

"I lit candles. For weeks. Months, even."

"Why did you stop?"

"I found something else to remember her by."

Seventeen trinkets, locked away in his inside jacket pocket, out of view, but always within reach. In September, on the anniversary of their date, she'd sent him a ring. For once, her meaning had been clear.

He stands. He feels for her, but he doesn't have any more answers to give.

"Goodbye, Rosalind."

"Goodnight, Harry."

This morning, a year to the day, a pearl. Cultured and unique.

She is lost and she wants him to find her. She has fallen and she is waiting for him to catch her. If not in Tahiti, then in Paris or Penzance, Rome or Rotterdam, New York or New Skegness. Wherever she is, she will be waiting.

Harry walks home, overcoat dark against the inky night. He turns off the main road and onto side streets, away from streetlights and prying eyes. His steps quicken and his footsteps ring out against the cobbles, faster and faster, the sound dying into the night. There are no stars tonight; no light to see by, and it's getting harder to make him out, a lone figure immersed in the dark. As he turns a corner, he is smiling to himself, hands in pockets, hunched against the cold.

By the time he should reach home, he has disappeared completely.


End file.
